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LOST CITY 


VERSES 


BY 

KATHLEEN MONTGOMERY WALLACE 


CAMBRIDGE 

W. HEFFER & SONS LTD 

1918 


One Shilling Net 



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LOST CITY 


“My thanks are due to the Editors of 
the JVestminster Gazette, the (Cambridge Review, 
and the Cambridge ^Magazine, for permission to 
reprint some of the following poems.” 


LOST CITY 


VERSES 


BY 

KATHLEEN MONTGOMERY WALLACE 

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CAMBRIDGE 

W. HEFFER & SONS LTD 



CANTABRIGIAE 
MORTUISQUE CARISSIMIS 



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BEFORE 


THE GENTLE COUNTY 


TJ'ROM north and south the counties 
With hills and splendour call, 

But Cambridgeshire of fenlands 
Is gentlest of them all. 

Sweetness of cool gra\'' beanfields ; 

May in the snow-white hedge, 

And amber flame of sunsets 
Against the land’s stark edge. 

Open and green and golden 
It spreads before the eyes. 

With roads that call to follow. 

White under quiet skies ; 

And under dreaming willows 
The river winds and gleams. 

Nor speaks above a whisper 

For fear to break their dreams. . . . 

It winds about the township 
Of gracious walls and towers, 

Within whose shade is healing. 

Whose years are young as hours — 

Oh, here’s the Gentle County, 

The land of hearts’ release, 

In Cambridgeshire of fenlands, 

Upon whose fields be peace. . . . 


7 


ON THE LOWER RIVER 


/^H, when the very last is played 

Of games that we have lost and won, 
And out of reach of wind and sun 
You are a shade ; and I a shade, 

We’ll not be sociable, nor mix 
With all those far heroic souls, 

But slip away to where there rolls 
The quiet current of the Styx. 

Charon will stand aside for us 
(Fingering a coin, all amaze). 

And you, whom every dog obeys, / 

Will swiftly deal with Cerberus, 

Who, rearing an abysmal throat 
In bull-dog smile serene and bland. 

With all three tongues will lick your hand 
And curl round meekly in the boat. 

So, moving smoothly from the .side, 

You with the oars and I the lines. 

Over the tide where no sun shines 
That immemorial barque shall glide, 


8 


Sheer through the weeds and sedges dank, 
Disturbing ghostly rats at play, 

And veering, in a well-known way 
From one bank to the other bank. . . . 

And when the backwater we pass 
Where Lethe flows but makes no sound, 

We will shoot on, nor turn us round 
At those faint voices from the grass ; 

‘‘ Turn. Here is room for millions yet. 

And here the cure for every ill. ...” 

Be still, most piteous shades, be still. 

We would remember, not forget. 

And when indignant ghosts who wait 
For Charon’s boat across the stream. 

Shatter with shouts his pipe-filled dream. 
Demanding why the he’s late — 

He’ll call across the waters black, 

” Sorry, sir ! They was lookin’ so 
Happy, I had to let them go — 

And Heaven knows when they’ll be back ! . . .” 


9 


ET EGO IN ARCADIA VIXI 


A UTUMN is on the fields and still November, 
Here with a wide-winged flame and flooding 
of gold, 

Here where the moist ploughed slopes rise fold 
on fold, 

Down where the cherry-copse heart is a crimson 
ember. 

Up w'here the blood red tide of the woods is 
rolled, 

— ^And oh, dear God ! I remember — how I 
remember 

Autumn upon your fields in a time grown old. . . . 

— Shivering poplar trees on the long horizon. 

Wastes of the dim deep fen, and the water^s 
gleam. 

Rime all white on the furrow and toiling team, 

Scarcely a streak of colour to rest the eyes on — 

And here, where the beechwoods blaze and the 
red fires stream. 

The call of your far, dank fields that the dead 
mist lies on. 

Tugs at my heart for ever, and shatters my 
dream. . . . 


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MAY TERM, 1916 


T HAVE come back in a rich hour of May 
My heart, to this gray town of yours and 
mine, 

To the grave gardens by the river’s line 
Where scents rise softly at the end of day 
— Back from hot city pavements worlds away. 
Where life flows outwards in a ceaseless line, 
Where soul treads hard on soul and makes no 
sign. 

— To the dear smell of lawns, and the branches 
sway. 

Gold of the sky, black boughs, and the rooks call 
The evening stillness rises like a tide— 

Across the cobbled court I hush my tread ; 
There is your window, lamplight on your wall, 
There is a shadow on the blind inside — 

But you are dead, my dear, but you are dead. 


13 


WALNUT-TREE COURT 

^ I ^HE court below drowns in an emerald deep 
Of dusk, all murmurous 
With things the river whispers in its sleep ; 

I, leaning outward thus 

From this high window, over the silence, hear 
Your voice, your laugh, and know 
Down in the dusk, and infinitely near 
You stand below. . . . 


14 


CHESTNUT SUNDAY 


'C'ROM end to end of Cambridge town 
The chestnut boughs move up and down, 
And rain their petals on the grass 
And on the busy folk who pass. 

Their foaming sweetness drops in showers 
Under a sky like gentian flowers ; 

White as a bride’s is their array, 

The chestnuts keeping holiday ! 

Oh, in your dreamless sleep, my dear, 

I know, I know you see me here. 

Between the voices and the sun. 

And petals pattering, one by one. 

I never feel you watch me weep. 

Nor din of battle breaks your sleep. 

But I am sure you woke this hour 
To see your chestnut trees in flower ! 


15 


UNRETURNING 


T TNDER these walls and towers 
By these green water-ways, 

Oh the good days were ours, 

The unforgotten days ! 

Too happy to be wise 

When the road used to run 

Under such maddening skies 
Headlong to Huntingdon. 

Paths where the lilac spills 
Blossom too rich to bear ; 

Gold sheets of daffodils 

Lighting the Market Square ; 

Shimmer of gliding prows 

Where the green shade is cool, 

Tea under orchard boughs. 
Smoke-rings by Byron ^s Pool. 

Sunset at back of King^s 
Behind the silver spire. 

Talk of uncounted things 
Over a college fire — 


16 


Red leaves above your door, 
Gray walls and echoing street 
Whose stones will never more 
Ring to your passing feet ; 

Strange ! to think Term is here, 
Life leads the same old dance. 
While you lie dead, my dear, 
Somewhere in France. . . . 


17 


THE DREAM 


HROUGH the still streets whose windows 


were shut down 

I wandered in a dumb and unknown town, 

Where streets wound on and on, and had no 
name. 

Where unseen fingers brushed my sleeve, and 
came 

To a walled place of trees, and a voice said, 

‘‘ Seek here, seek here, and you shall find your 
dead ! 

And stooping down beneath the boughs asway 

I found your name, and knew that there you lay. 

And the blue twilight fell, and the cold dew. 

While I lay in the grass and spoke to you. . . . 

So, when I rose, Now God be thanked,'" said I, 
Who set my feet to find you, where you lie. 

My own, my own, I shall not dream again 

You lie uncoffined in the pitiless rain. ..." 

And woke ; and knew I dreamed ; and turned, 
to see 

There, on my pillow, the old agony. . . . 



18 


OLD ROADS 


T HAVE been glad in such unlikely places 
-*■ That now I walk in the same ways alone 
The very stones are thronged by vanished faces 
And echoes of dead laughter’s undertone. 

Mellow stone courts, a bridge across a river, 

A frosty road whose flints strike leaping fire — 
The dead days stab me till I stand and shiver. 
Because of rose-light over a gray spire. 

And there’s a cliff-road with the white gulls 
wheeling. 

Where ev’ry time, they catch me unaware ; 
And still the happy ghosts come stealing, stealing. 
At just one corner of Trafalgar Square. . . . 

At city crossings and in heather spaces. 

There’s not a pathway that my feet have known 
But mocks me, with its throng of vanished faces 
And echoes of dead laughter’s undertone. 


19 


NEW ROADS 

O F all the winds that drive, be one to guide us 
Into new roads, where we no more may be 
Haunted of feet that used to walk beside us. 
And now lie silently. 

Through crowded streets go treading the feet 
that left us. 

In spray-blown lanes they follow our steps like 
goads ; 

Oh unrestoring Powers that have bereft us. 
Give us, at least, new roads ! 


20 


DIED OF WOUNDS 


■pECAUSE 

sav, 


you are dead, so many words they 


If you could hear them, how they crowd, they 
crowd ; 

Dying for England — but you must be proud — 
And Greater love, honour, a debt to pay,^^ 
And Cry, dear,^^ someone says ; and someone 
“ Pray ! 

What do they mean, their words that throng 
so loud ? 


This, dearest ; that for us there will not be 
Laughter and joy of living dwindling cold. 
Ashes of words that dropped in flame, first told ; 
Stale tenderness, made foolish suddenly. 

This only, hearths desire, for you and me. 

We who lived love, will not see love grow old. 

We who had morning time and crest o' the wave 
Will have no twilight chill after the gleam. 
Nor any ebb-tide with a sluggish stream ; 

No, nor clutch wisdom as a thing to save. 

We keep for ever (and yet they call me brave) 
Untouched, unbroken, unrebuilty our dream. 


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INTERVAL; FRONT ROW STALLS 


/^VER the footlights the ankles caper, 

The grease paint glistens, the fringed eyes 
glance ; 

The last note shrills, and the curtain runs. 

The man beside me opens a paper : 

“ Bitter weather — three mile advance — 
Heavy losses — we take the guns.” 

And between my eyes and the crimson lights 
Move the ranks of men who sat here o’ nights, 
And now lie heaped in the mud together. 

Stiff and still in the bitter weather. 


22 


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YESTERDAY 


^’T^HE winds are out to-night, 

Strange winds, blown from a far-off 
troublous sea. 

Rending the sky over the chimney pots. 

Into a writhing web of jade and pearl — 

And lashing my sedate black London trees 
All into wonder and a breathless maze. 

I wonder if vou hear ? 

From your still bed under the Flanders soil, 

I wonder if you know the winds are out ? 

For, if you do, I know across your sleep 
There comes the dream that’s tugging at my 
heart 

Alone here with the lamplight and the fire. 
And the day dying over London roofs : 

The thin white road 

Leaping between the fenlands, where the sky 
Swoops down to meet the fields, the flat brown 
fields. 

With never a hill’s curve, only poplar boughs 
Like spires out of the mist at the day’s edge. 
And all the mad winds of the world full crv 
Careering through the dusk into the town. 


23 


And down the narrow streets, 
Under the gray towers and serene gray walls, 
Under the yellowing elms along the Backs, 
The winds went rollicking and dancing still ; 
Swaying the chain of lights down King's Parade 
And driving purple cloud-wrack down the sky 
Running red flame behind the spires of King's. 

And so they came to us 
Beating with wild wings in the court below. 
Rocking the room, breaking the fire in gusts. 
Filled with the spice of dead leaves and wet 
boughs. 

Just as they come to me, alone, to-night. 

My dear, they say they will rebuild 

the world 

Out of the soil where you and yours lie dead ; 
But not, I think, the free, the careless hours 
That knew no shadow of purpose, but were glad. 
When the glad winds raced under Cambridge 
walls. 


W. Heffer & Sons Ltd., 104, Hills Road, Cambridge. 




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